Who runs Microsoft now?
MS-Watch | at | by Mike
As the sun sets on Jim Allchin's Microsoft career, the dawn ahead holds uncertainty about the company's direction under its predominately sales-and-marketing leadership.
Allchin and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, who retires on June 30, 2008, are among the last of a generation of Microsoft executives. They represent an era and software developer culture that is in transition--or is going to have to be, because of changes at the top.
Microsoft's evolving management structure puts sales-and-marketing people at the top of the Microsoft organizational pyramid. Several reorganizations pushed aside or put to pasture many high-level, hardcore technology managers and replaced them with sales and marketing folks. Before September 2005, product people had more direct contact with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer than they do today.